This guide assumes you have set up dcrd and dcrwallet using configuration files. If you used dcrinstall, you have configuration files already. Using configuration files is highly recommended - it makes for an easier time issuing commands to dcrwallet and dcrd through dcrctl. A guide for minimum configuration (saving your RPC username and RPC password) can be found here.

NOTE: dcrwallet.conf is split into two sections labeled [Application Options] and [Ticket Buyer Options]. Any setting prefixed by ‘ticketbuyer.’ must be placed within the lower [Ticket Buyer Options] section. All other settings go within [Application Options].

There are a few decisions to be made before venturing into this guide. First, will you be using a stakepool to delegate your ticket voting rights? Second, will you be purchasing tickets manually or automatically via the ticketbuyer feature?

Stakepool ticket purchasing allows a stakeholder to delegate voting rights to a stakepool. These stakepools are online at all times (24/7) and very rarely miss a vote. They utilize multi-sig transactions so they’re unable to touch any of your DCR. As a downside, most require a small percentage of your voting reward as a pool fee. Stakepool delegated tickets also require a larger transaction size (~540 Bytes vs. ~300 Bytes for solo-voting tickets) for purchasing which results in a slightly higher absolute ticket fee since fees are calculated by DCR/kB.

Solo-voting requires you to have a voting wallet unlocked at all times (24/7), or else you may miss votes and lose your voting reward. You do not have to pay pool fees and your ticket purchases are more likely to be mined with a smaller absolute fee (due to the miners selecting tickets based on DCR/kB ticket fee rates and solo tickets having a smaller TXN size).

Manual ticket purchasing vs. automated ticketbuyer purchasing is mainly up to personal preference. The normal benefits of automation apply to ticketbuyer, but many may be overwhelmed by the amount variables that can be configured. Also, ticketbuyer’s fee calculation sometimes doesn’t result in the most economical fee for a stakeholder. Some people also enjoy manually purchasing tickets every few days and trying to bid the most economical fee. Both methods will only purchase tickets when your wallet is unlocked.

REMINDER: Solo-voting with a voting wallet that doesn’t stay online 24/7 may result in missed votes and forfeited stake rewards.

To solo-vote, you simply set the enablevoting option when starting dcrwallet, unlock the wallet with your private passphrase, and buy tickets. With enablevoting enabled and dcrwallet unlocked, your wallet will automatically handle voting.

To set up your dcrwallet for solo-staking, add the following line to your dcrwallet.conf config file in the [Application Options] section:

enablevoting=1

Once restarted with that line in dcrwallet.conf your wallet will be configured for solo-voting and you can now start purchasing tickets.

To allow a stakepool to vote for you, you first have to sign up for a stakepool. A list of them can be found here. After signing up, there should be directions for creating a new P2SH address and importing your multi-sig voting script. A brief overview is provided here:

ticketaddress = Optional String: The ticket address to which voting rights are given

numtickets = Optional Number: The number of tickets to purchase at once (e.g. 1)

pooladdress = Optional String: The address to pay stake pool fees to

poolfees = Optional Number: The percentage of fees to pay to the stake pool (e.g. 5)

expiry = Optional Number: The block height where unmined tickets will expire from the mempool, returning the original DCR to your “fromaccount”. If left blank, tickets will only expire in the mempool when the ticket price changes.

comment = Optional String: This argument is unused and has no significance.

Ticket Fees

Your ticketfee is the DCR/kB rate you’ll pay to have your ticket purchase be included in a block by a miner. You’ll notice that the above purchaseticket command doesn’t include any ticketfee arguments. The ticketfee argument can be set two ways.

During startup by adding ticketfee=<fee rate> to the [Application Options] of your dcrwallet.conf.

While your wallet is running, using the dcrctl --wallet setticketfee <fee rate> command. This is not a permanent setting and will default to 0.001 every time your wallet is restarted unless a ticketfee is specified in dcrwallet.conf.

Why are ticket fees important? Usually the default fee of 0.001 is enough to get your tickets mined, however there are extremely rare circumstances where an increased ticket fee may be beneficial. When ticket demand outpaces supply (there are only a maximum of 2880 tickets available at each price interval) a situation is created where stakeholders can increase their ticket fees in order to get their ticket purchases mined ahead of others offering lower fees. This type of “fee wars” scenario has not occurred since the new ticket price algorithm was introduced in July 2017.

Third party sites such as https://dcrstats.com can be used to find the average ticket fee in the mempool.

Ticket Price

To get the current ticket price, issue the dcrctl --wallet getstakeinfo command and look for the difficulty value. This is the price of each ticket in the current price window. You’ll want to adjust your spendlimit argument in the purchaseticket command to be greater than this difficulty value when purchasing tickets manually.

To purchase tickets used for solo-staking, you only need to specify the fromaccount and spendlimit arguments while using the purchaseticket command. For example: dcrctl --wallet purchaseticket "default" 50 would use DCR from your default account to purchase a ticket if the current ticket price was a max of 50 DCR.

If you wish to specify the numtickets or expiry arguments, you would specify a minconf of 1, an empty ticketaddress (“”), an empty pooladdress (“”), and an empty poolfees (0). Two example follow:

dcrctl --wallet purchaseticket "default" 50 1 "" 5 "" 0 100000 would purchase 5 tickets that would expire from the mempool if not mined by block 100,000, as the 8th argument (expiry) is set to 100000.

Pool Tickets

To purchase tickets with their voting rights delegated to a stakepool, we have to use the full purchaseticket command.

Your ticketaddress is the P2SH Address found at the top of “Tickets” page of your stakepool under the “Ticket Information” section.

Your pooladdress is the address for your stakepool’s fees are collected. This can be found in the “Ticket Instructions” section of your stakepool’s “Tickets” page.

Your poolfees is the percentage of the stake reward that will go to the pooladdress when a ticket votes. It is important to match your pool’s advertised fee.

A quick example:

dcrctl --wallet purchaseticket "default" 23 1 DcExampleAddr1For2Demo3PurposesOnly 1 DsExampleAddr1For2Demo3PurposesOnly 7.5 would use DCR from your default account to purchase 1 ticket if the current ticket price is a max of 23 DCR. The P2SH Address received from the stakepool is DcExampleAddr1For2Demo3PurposesOnly and their fee address is DsExampleAddr1For2Demo3PurposesOnly. They will collect a 7.5% fee if this ticket successfully votes. This ticket will not expire from the mempool until the ticket price changes, as only 7 arguments were specified (no expiry).